


Penitence, Paradox and Psychopathy: Why Mary is A Bit Not Good

by TheConsultingActor



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-02-22
Updated: 2014-02-22
Packaged: 2018-01-13 08:13:27
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,469
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1219021
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheConsultingActor/pseuds/TheConsultingActor
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Mary is by far the most enigmatic and divisive part of the show right now. But the one consistency that I saw was that her behavior is quite psychopathic.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Penitence, Paradox and Psychopathy: Why Mary is A Bit Not Good

Disclaimer: I don’t intend this to upset anybody or bash anybody else’s headcanon. This is pretty anti-Mary, so if you want to avoid that, this won’t be up your alley. I’m not a medical professional and can’t give any sort of professional diagnosis. I can, however, give my opinions on what the writers and actors, who aren’t medical professionals either, could be going for.        

I’ve had Mary on my mind lately, and I went back and re-watched HLV for any clues in her micro expressions as to what she’s really feeling (given that Amanda didn’t know about her background before, I didn’t think it’d be very useful to watch for clues in the other episodes. I will use bits of the dialogue from the earlier episodes though, since the writers knew). And the more I watched, the more questions started popping up. She’s by far the most enigmatic and divisive part of the show right now. But the one consistency that I saw was that her behavior is quite psychopathic. I think that especially explains why the fandom is so divided on her—Mary is set up as a character that does horrific things and yet is so charismatic that she is intensely likeable. That charisma is one of the strongest character traits of most psychopaths. I don’t say that as an insult to people who like Mary—there’s good reason to: she is hugely appealing. And I’m not using psychopath to mean someone incapable of remorse or feeling, either. But it does give a very ominous picture of her future with John, especially since Amanda has said she knows something about the plot of the next series (which means that her choices are quite possibly deliberate foreshadowing.) 

My thinking on this is strongly influenced by a book called “The Wisdom of Psychopaths.” It was written by Kevin Dutton, a research psychologist at the University of Oxford, who pointed out that a lot of psychopathic traits are also found in CEOs, spies, and even saints. Here’s the bit that that’s most relevant to Mary: “people think psychopaths are just callous and without fear….But there is definitely something more going on. When emotions are their primary focus, we’ve seen that psychopathic individuals show a normal emotional response. But when focused on something else, they become insensitive to emotions entirely.” And on the subject of empathy, he says, “There is a degree of emotional empathy. Sadistic serial killers feel their victims’ pain in exactly the same way that you or I might feel it. They feel it cognitively and objectively. And they feel it emotionally and subjectively, too. But the difference between them and us is that they commute that pain to their own subjective _pleasure_.” In fact, in a study of imprisoned criminals, those with the _most_ empathy were “high-IQ psychopaths with a history of extreme violence.” Which goes a long way towards explaining why Mary can both be a kind neighbor and a for-hire assassin with a trail of bodies long enough to make Magnussen call her wicked. Mary isn’t unfeeling or incapable of empathy, but _pain_ in others (as separated from empathy towards other emotions, which she experiences more normally when she’s focused on it) gives her a rush.

 

Which doesn’t sound exactly like the typical tv image of a psychopath, right? But it sure sounds like Mary. After all, we’ve seen emotion from her (think of her reaction to John’s acceptance), but we’ve also seen her be chillingly blank. She’s very inconsistent with the amount of emotion she shows, and this is the best explanation I’ve found that covers both the inconsistency and the tendency towards really harmful actions.  
  
 So what is a psychopath? Here are the traits listed (don’t worry, I’ll be getting to the Johnlock-related bits soon)

  * Superficial Charm



 

  * Grandiose sense of self-worth  
“I’m the best thing that could have happened to you”
  * Pathological lying  
(she can read Sherlock so easily and chose to continue lying anyway even though Sherlock would do just about anything to save her marriage)  

  * Conning/manipulative  
“You did see that. And you married me. It’s what you like”
  * Lack of remorse or guilt  
(I’ll go into the details of this one later in the meta)
  * Shallow affect (showing little emotional reaction even when feeling intensely)  
Think about how still Mary is during the confrontation at 221B. She doesn’t even flinch when John kicks the chair.
  * Callous  
(again I’ll go into more detail, but watch how Mary treats Wiggins—somebody who doesn’t have anything Mary wants)
  * Failure to accept responsibility for own actions  
Again, “You did see that. And you married me.”
  * Need for stimulation  
“The doctor’s wife must be a little bit bored by now”
  * Parasitic lifestyle  
Mary created a new life and lives entirely in John’s world—we don’t even know what Mary on her own was like. We have a vague idea of what she did, but not many clues as to her personality or lifestyle independent of John.
  * Lack of realistic, long-term goals  
Mary seems to have long-term goals—she tries to build a domestic life. But it isn’t realistic at all because, as we see, she can’t just erase her past, and she doesn’t have any strategies for effectively dealing with it.
  * Impulsivity  
No matter how you interpret her shooting of Sherlock, she shot her husband’s best friend after less than a minute of consideration.
  * Irresponsibility  
While pregnant, she broke into the office of “the most dangerous man” John will ever meet, concussed her bridesmaid, and shot a man. And, given what we know about how hard it was to get in, it seems to be implied that she did some sort of spiderman-y stunt to get in from the outside of the skyscraper.
  * Poor behavioral controls  
A lot of the things Mary blurts out, from her “the best thing that could have happened to you” to teasing Sherlock about befriending Janine during the 221B confrontation show poor behavioral control—inappropriate and counterproductive to her goal of keeping John.
  * Early behavioral problems  
We don’t know enough about Mary’s past to answer this one—what we do know is that she isn’t close with her parents, or they’re dead.
  * Juvenile delinquency  
Again, not enough information, but quite possible
  * Criminal versatility  
Mary is equally adept at deciphering skip codes and keeping her hand steady when shooting somebody she knows well, at successfully hiding lies and at emotional manipulation. We don’t know enough about exactly what she did, but her behavior definitely shows that she’d be capable of a wide variety of crimes.
  * Also interesting to note considering how quickly she and John married: many short-term marital relationships and promiscuous sexual behavior. Which doesn’t bode well for their marriage—and that’s just the tip of a very ominous characterization iceberg.



So the information we have about Mary fits the descriptions of the facets of psychopathy used on the PCL-R, the most common test for psychopaths. With that in mind, I watched Mary really closely. And her behavior made a lot more sense.

Ok. So, the first time we see Mary in this episode, shots of her are being interspersed with shots of John being shot at. We don’t see her at all during the happier part of the dream, when John’s remembering meeting Sherl. Which sets us up to side against their relationship from the start—Mary is connected more to the type of excitement John got from the war than from Sherlock. She gives him the danger, but not the emotional connection. Which gets really uncomfortably obvious as the scene goes on. 

Several important things happen in this scene. This is one of the biggest: the first time we see this expression from Mary, one she’ll use for most of the episode. There is no “superficial charm” in the way she looks at John anymore. And it’s more than just frustration—it’s disdain. Throughout the episode, she alternates between this and tearful fear—between emotion and complete coldness. Here’s why:  
  
I did some research into people who’ve dated psychopaths—I figured Moffat would be more drawn to personal stories than clinical research if he were reading up on psychopaths. And victims spotted a pattern: ‘idealize, devalue, discard.’ Psychopaths fall hard and fast, get deeply infatuated with somebody and enjoy the chase, make themselves into the _perfect companion_ to get the person they want. Then, according to psychopathyawareness.wordpress.com, “once psychopaths feel they have you in their grasp—once your identity, hopes and expectations are pinned on them—they get bored with you and move on to new sources of pleasure and diversion. Since psychopaths are intuitively skilled at “dosing,” or giving you just enough validation and attention to keep you on the hook, you may not immediately notice the devaluation. It’s as if the psychopath intuitively knows when to be charming again (in order not to lose you) and when to push your boundaries, further and lower.”

Mary is dying of boredom right now. She thought this life was what she wanted, but it can’t live up to her expectations—which is a really common problem for psychopaths. But at the same time, she doesn’t want to give John up—psychopaths don’t actually like how short-lived their relationships are. They want love and affection, too (Psychiatric Times, “The Hidden Suffering of the Psychopath.”). Being a psychopath doesn’t mean being immune to loneliness, but it does mean that no one lives up to your expectations, leaving you “disillusioned”—one of the words Sherlock deduced about Mary. The problem is, what Mary is really clinging to is the relationship, not John as a human being. (More on that later.) We see her mask, the persona of the perfect companion to John Watson, starting to slip. Watch for this expression later—it shows when Mary’s attraction is waning. 

Take a look at Mary’s expression when Kate isn’t watching. For a nurse, she sure looks annoyed at having to comfort somebody. This is something that keeps cropping up in this episode—when she isn’t being watched, Mary doesn’t care for other people who don’t have something she wants.

Once Kate leaves, we get our first glimpse of how John and Mary act as a married couple. And as the daughter of two parents who divorced because they literally never talked about anything important, it looks very familiar to me. You could cut the tension with a knife. John’s laugh when he says that he’s being neighborly “since now” is absolutely grating. And how does Mary respond? She uses sex and her pregnancy for leverage. “You can’t go, I’m pregnant” is about leaving in more ways than one. She knows that their marriage is already in the dumps one month in, and she’s going to use whatever influence she has to keep that from happening—psychopaths crave control in their relationships. Regardless of how she feels about the marriage, she can’t stand being left. And so she follows her husband to a drug den—only to sit in the car outside, like a mom waiting for her kid to get out of soccer practice. She doesn’t try to check if John’s ok by calling his phone, and she doesn’t wish him luck. She just follows him, and, on seeing him start to walk away from her, calls his attention back with sex –“it’s a tiny bit sexy!”(Interesting, since it’s basically the only thing Sherlock doesn’t give John. Yet) Her choices in this whole scene are impulsive. And very odd. 

(I couldn’t get a picture at exactly the right moment, but Mary smiles the same cold smile when Isaac says that “they’re having a fight.”) We get a lot of imagery over the course of this episode of Mary with parts of her face concealed or reflected, sitting and watching John’s life get messy. Here, almost all the shots of her are through the rear view mirror, showing very little of her mouth—which is smiling. This is later repeated after John tosses the AGRA flash drive in the fire—once again, we see only the part of Mary showing emotions appropriate to the situation, and the rest of her face is hidden from us. The rear-view mirror is especially interesting, as they carry stickers warning that the things reflected in them may be distorted and confusingly represented (“objects may be closer than they appear.”)

When Wiggins runs up, holding his injured arm, pleading to be let in because he has a broken arm, Mary instantly dismisses him: “No. Go away.” The camera even moves to show her eyes reflected in the mirror, watching him coldly. It is a sketchy situation, but she is with John and Sherlock and is quite capable of defending herself (as we know), and dismisses him instantly without even a second’s pause to consider. Her warm front doesn’t extend to people who can’t give her something—she takes, she doesn’t give. Again, odd for a nurse, which makes me suspect that she chose her career to get closer to John—psychopaths switch jobs frequently. This whole scene she is icily annoyed, not seeming to show any care for Sherlock (that isn’t her focus right now, so why should she?).  In fact, the only time we see anything that reads as real engagement is when she jeers at “Shezza.” And that isn’t a joke designed to break the tension, it’s a joke for her own benefit.  As she drives off to take Sherlock to get drug tested, she looks completely determined and unsurprised, fully ready to watch Sherlock humiliated. As she drives off, we see someone taking a bicycle from a dumpster, possibly stealing it. It’s an unnecessary shot plot-wise, but considering that it’s two back-to-back shots of people moving vehicles, one of which has a vaguely criminal undertone, it seems to be another “Mary is ominous” message.

The very first person the camera goes to after the slap is Mary—who whips around faster than she does to see Sherlock arrive in Magnussen’s office, or John kicking the chair. Here, watching Sherlock getting slapped, she is emotionally engaged, and looks almost…hopeful. Look at the reactions around her, Isaac pulling back in shock, Wiggins looking unsurprised (having seen this before, probably with his own friends/family). And then Mary, eyes wide, brows pulled up, not leaning away, corners of her mouth just starting to turn up (the camera does this a lot with Mary—shows us a hint of an inappropriate reaction forming and then flashes away, in a sort of emotional peepshow.)

Wiggins says that Mary hurt him—while wrapping an ace bandage around his wrist. I’ve had sprains before and I know that they’re sensitive, but it’d take more than a fidget (and Wiggins hardly moves his arm) to hurt somebody with an ace bandage. Especially since Mary is a trained nurse. Her reaction is to push the blame off of herself “you moved.” Which he did—but as a nurse I’d have thought she’d be very used to finicky patients by now and wouldn’t feel the need to blame the high drug addict. 

During Wiggins’ deduction, Mary reacts very quickly and allows herself to show surprise—she is being given unexpected emotional information about her marriage that she didn’t have (that the tension was obvious even to complete strangers.) The other times we see her, even in the 221B scene and Magnussen’s office, she is unsurprised (she must have run through multiple mental scenarios and fantasies about how to play John finding out, and so was more prepared even though the stakes are higher. This too is a psychopathic trait—they are especially calm in the situations with the highest stakes. In fact, sometimes their heart rates drop in terrifying situations instead of elevating. More on those scenes later.)

Skipping ahead to Sherlock telling John that John isn’t busy and that he’s gained 7 pounds. Mary and Sherlock have been talking, but John and Sherlock haven’t. Sherlock and Mary already talk behind John’s back about the state of their marriage (they both know what putting on weight means to John), and Mary still chooses to lie instead of asking Sherlock for help. She’s fine with making jokes about his weight behind his back, though. Interesting that this scene comes right after Magnussen’s first meeting with Sherlock—a scene showing how calmly and even politely Sherlock deals with an equally matched opponent, even a horrendously rude one. Even one he hates.

Moving on to Magnussen’s office. After breaking in, concussing Janine and threatening Magnussen, she hears some really interesting things from CAM. While whimpering on his knees, he says, “What would your husband think, eh? Your lovely husband, upright, honorable, so English. What would he say to you now? You’re doing this to protect him from the truth…but is this protection he would want?” These are all obvious appeals to Mary’s emotional side, but she remains completely cold and determined. Because, at its essence, the idea of going against John’s wishes isn’t what she’s truly scared of—Magnussen is poking at the wrong pressure point. Mary isn’t most scared of breaking John, she’s scared of breaking the relationship.  And her original plan for Magnussen protects the relationship, so of course she doesn’t consider changing it.

When she hears someone enter the room, not only does she not flinch, she doesn’t even turn around. Which is a bit odd in itself—wouldn’t an assassin typically want to look around and recalculate immediately? For one, psychopaths have very low startle reflexes. When she asks if John’s in the room in the same annoyed tone she uses with John at the beginning, there isn’t a trace of fear in her expression. This to me is one of the biggest clues of psychopathy, because most of us (even trained assassins I’d think) would be very engaged if a civilian, let alone a civilian who has emotional power over someone important to us, walked in on us pointing a gun at somebody. But it seems like Mary is starting to devalue John. She wants to keep him, but she’s also very bored in the relationship. Psychopaths love danger (which is part of why many of them do become spies, assassins, or stock traders. Mary’s career choice fits her well.) Mary wants to keep the relationship, but she also loves the rush that comes from risking it. When John doesn’t know, she has to be constantly on the alert, ready for something to go wrong, and that’s a state in which she functions excellently. She thrives in that combination of success (winning by keeping John) and danger (constantly risking losing John). But it’s hard to keep things that way, and any change—either John becoming easily and certainly hers or finding out and leaving permanently—will leave Mary miserable. There’s no stability in her relationships. (Which actually makes this all quite tragic—like Sherlock, like John, she has huge difficulty keeping up healthy relationships because of her attraction to danger. But unlike them, she has a pathological need to seek out destruction, despite wanting love.)

Here’s Mary’s reaction to Magnussen asking if she’s going to kill them both. It’s quite interesting that given the choice between shooting Magnussen and shooting Sherlock, she trains the gun on Sherlock first, even though Sherlock is less likely to try to attack her from behind or hurt her at all than Magnussen. Magnussen is the one with a motivation to harm Mary, but she turns her back on him to face Sherlock and smiles ironically at the idea of killing both, as if she knows that isn’t her plan. But she tells us that she will kill Sherlock “if he takes one more step.” Which is odd in itself—John is downstairs and could come up at any moment. If Mary were really worried about him finding out and thought shooting Sherlock and knocking CAM out was her only way to protect herself without killing Sherlock, she would have shot immediately to have more time. But she doesn’t. She waits until he makes a move and uses it to prove her power. 

This is Mary’s face the second before she pulls the trigger. Her eyes are wide, but her expression doesn’t read as fear to me. It looks more like anticipation, excitement even. And notice that the right corner of her mouth, the one in shadow, the one hidden from the eye of the viewer, is turning up. In CAM’s office, Mary’s plan doesn’t actually go all that wrong—she thinks she does get rid of an obstacle to her marriage. But the real obstacle to her marriage to John (as we’ve seen with him taking her back after finding out more about her past) isn’t Magnussen and his information. It’s Sherlock. If she hadn’t killed Sherlock and word got out to John about her past, she could have successfully pleaded remorse. But John will always be more attached to Sherlock. Mary, a nurse who doesn’t like to fix things but likes to be needed, was initially drawn to John at his weakest, mourning the death of the most important person in his life. She likes being in a position of power, but she doesn’t like having to talk things out to repair relationships, and now that Sherlock is back, she is realizing that that makes John less available in their own relationship. She is willing to kill Sherlock because her intention isn’t to keep John happy or sane—it’s to keep the relationship, and she knows that when John is grieving Sherlock’s death he is much more solidly hers. But that’s the problem for Mary—the more solidly John is hers, the clearer it is that the chase (the game) is over, the less she will want him. It’s paradoxical. She is constantly chasing the unattainable, in relationships and in her own identity (wanting to be a suburban nurse and an assassin, a wife and someone who plays games with her relationship.)

Plot point: Mary turns her gun on Magnussen instantly after shooting Sherlock, but doesn’t actually move towards him to hit him, which we know she does because we see Magnussen lying on the floor. Mary has almost no time to make an escape, but she isn’t moving especially quickly. And the more time she takes, the less time she’d have to call an ambulance before leaving. 

Mary’s voice cracks when she apologizes. But after she shoots him, she starts to smile that cold smile before the camera moves away again. (And as an actor, I can tell you that it’s a lot easier to manipulate your voice than it is to change your own micro expressions. Making it sound like you’re about to cry is really simple, and psychopaths are especially good at both reading emotions in others—“I can tell when you’re fibbing”—and projecting emotions they aren’t feeling.)

Mary walks (and then runs) into the hospital looking quite upset. She already knows he’s pulled through—why would she need to run if she thought he were dead? (She was probably on her way to tell him not to talk to John, but John got there first.) But she acts surprised that Sherlock is alive. She has absolutely no reason to lie about that—why on earth would John complain if she admitted to knowing Sherlock is alive? But she lies. And when John tells her she’s in trouble, her immediate, automatic reaction is a smile, not fear. She doesn’t want to lose John, but she is enjoying the adrenaline. And when John’s back is turned, not only does her charming mask fall—once again, right before we cut to the next scene, she starts to smile her cold smile again. This is very bad news for her relationship with John—it shows that she’s getting value out of the relationship being on the rocks rather than out of winning by keeping it. We see that driven home even more in the “you don’t tell John” scene—she doesn’t sound concerned about the turn events have taken, despite the fact that things didn’t pan out how she’d planned (she doesn’t have the documents and Sherlock’s still alive), because she’s on the adrenaline rush of the danger her relationship is in. But she won’t just call it off, because she’s enjoying playing this game and John is the prize—even though she is getting progressively less invested in the relationship, for the moment she still wants what it symbolizes. Winning. Power. And being capable of keeping a relationship. 

The Mary in Sherlock’s mind palace creeped me out way more than the real Mary we’ve seen up until now, especially this almost reptilian head tilt she did, which we’d never seen her do before. She doesn’t behave like the Mary we’ve been shown thus far. I was wondering if Sherlock, loving John and furious that someone is lying to him, was exaggerating her in his mind. But on a re-watch, I realized that Mary does this same head tilt one other time—in the confrontation at 221B. While standing in the same odd stance, with her hands clasped twisted in front of her. Sherlock, who has spent quite a lot of time thinking about and being told about psychopaths and psychopathy, sees a more overtly frightening Mary than her public persona. A more dangerous side that comes out over time (like watching a psychopath slowly devalue somebody close to them). A side of Mary that becomes more threatening the longer you spend around her. And his version turns out to be an accurate prediction of her future behavior, in more than just body language. 

This is how Mary looks at Anderson and his friend (girlfriend?) as he tells her about Leinster Gardens. The charm is all gone. Mary is no longer putting on a show of perfection for everybody, and we can see how she views people who aren’t important to her. And it says a lot about her care (or lack thereof) for most people. It’s even clearer, though, in her treatment of Wiggins. She refuses to even look at him, but she doesn’t just walk past pretending not to see him. She actively engages, snapping a “no” at him. And when she does give him money, it’s very grudgingly and it sounds like about three coins (how generous!)

Interestingly, it’s her desire to be different that drives her to grudging altruism (“don’t be like all the rest”)—she is giving to prove a point to herself and to Wiggins, not to help. She has a hugely stigmatized personality disorder that makes relationships fraught and long-term relationships practically impossible, and she knows that. She’s constantly chasing difference, swinging between desires for danger and suburbia. Mary’s life is very unstable, and probably very lonely. I don’t know that all that subtext was intended in the line, but it’s there nonetheless. And I’m quite glad of that—just because Mary is psychopathic, just because she’s dangerous to John and their relationship is in huge trouble, doesn’t make her any less human. Her inability to keep up steady relationships doesn’t make her want them any less. I hope we get to see that continuing forward—by placing Mary in between Sherlock and John and making her a psychopath, Moffat is positioning her to be a villain. But I hope he manages not to make her evil. 

So, back to the plot. This is Mary’s face right before walking into the empty house. She doesn’t look intimidated at all—in fact if anything, she looks impressed. She likes the excitement of the game just as much as Sherlock does, and is enjoying the riddle and the adrenalin of figuring it out. 

Her reaction to her wedding picture being flashed is the fastest reaction we see from her in the entire episode—faster than when Sherlock walks in on her threatening CAM, faster than when John kicks the chair back at 221B (she doesn’t react at all to that). It reminds me a bit of the “fire exposes our priorities” scene from ASiB—but the picture, the priority that’s being exposed isn’t a picture of John, or her and John together. It’s of her alone. Which on a metaphorical level is pretty interesting—her priority is the new identity she’s built around John and everything their relationship symbolizes. Not John himself, or at least not anymore.

We get an oddly long shot of the wires in the empty house—which are a bit reminiscent of the colored vertical wires on the bomb strapped to John in TGG. Which, again, connects Mary to huge danger to John (and is especially interesting considering the theory that she’s connected to Moriarty. Predicting plot isn’t my forte, though, so I’ll leave that for somebody else to think about).

Mary only looks uneasy when she asks what Sherlock wants. She didn’t show any emotion at having her marriage called a lie, but is uncomfortable with the idea of losing it (which again, is pretty tragic. Mary lives and seems to always have lived in a world of lies, so she’s pretty accepting of the fact that this is a lie too. As long as she can get both the comfort of keeping it—proving that she won and that she can keep up a relationship—and the adrenaline of risking it—which placates the side of her that can’t stand the predictability of married life—she doesn’t care about how genuine it is.) She calms down once Sherlock starts reciting her past. Sherlock is biding his time, not talking about destroying the marriage, being “very slow.” He is focusing on her falseness rather than directly on the imminent destruction of the marriage, and Mary has accepted that falseness is a part of who she is.

How hard would it be for Mary, who broke into CAM’s highly guarded office so successfully, to find and break the projector that would be incriminating if she shot Sherlock? It would be a piece of cake for her. But if she shoots Sherlock now, she could easily escape, deal with Magnussen herself, and go back to her married life. And that would also mean the end of the excitement, the struggle that keeps her interested. Paradoxically, by protecting her marriage on John’s end, she would be endangering it on hers. She doesn’t shoot. Keeps her interest. 

 

This is Mary’s reaction to “That was surgery.” It isn’t agreement—if anything, I’d call it disdain. Look at how her lips are pursed, one eyebrow slightly raised. It looks a bit like her expression on “you were very slow.” She needs Sherlock to be an equal in order to keep her interested and on her toes, and by calling it surgery he’s taking competition away. This marks a change from Magnussen’s office—Mary’s interest is fading. When she shot Sherlock, it was enough to win. Now, the amount of risk to the relationship that she needs to stay interested is growing.

 Mary is not morally uncomfortable with the idea of being known as a liar. This is her saying that “John can’t ever know that I lied to him.” She looks fairly calm, and even starts to smile—she’s relying on this feeling of barely kept secrets. 

One of the most important pieces of information that this gives us is that John is not some tv-made “only exception” to her psychopathy. She doesn’t want him to find out, but she can be completely emotionally disengaged in a conversation about that happening.

“It would break him and I would lose him forever and I would never let that happen.” She isn’t saying that she won’t allow him to be broken, or that she won’t ever leave him. She just won’t ever let herself be the one who is let go.

We do see emotion here. Mary is terrified of being left. But it’s more complicated than that. Sherlock has just told them to “talk. Sort it out.” Mary hates those kinds of talks, is completely unable and unwilling to talk about how to fix things. She stays silent for almost the entire confrontation at 221B, and most of the remarks she does make to John are ways of manipulating him and/or cutting him down. She doesn’t want to “sort it out,” she wants to keep power, and the only way for her to do this is through the sort of conversation that she despises most. She is enormously upset—but it is about being caught, not about her actions.

I love how this shot is set up, with Sherlock on Mary’s side but both of them pushed farther from the center of the screen, closer together, claiming less personal space around them. Even\ with Sherlock on her side, John is dominating. Their relationship is hugely unequal, but at this point, Mary is less powerful. It doesn’t stay that way for long, though. 

Skipping forward months and months to Christmas (because obviously nothing emotionally important could have happened in there, nothing to see move along ARGH. Ok. Anyway.) We’re set up to like Mrs. Holmes, as she’s both a sympathetic character and a huge foil for Sherlock. When she talks, we hear Sherlock in the things she says. And she tells us that if she finds out who shot Sherlock, she’ll “turn absolutely monstrous…this was for Mary.” With no dialogue between those lines. Her words indicate, whether intentionally or not, that Sherlock’s side is against Mary and things will get absolutely monstrous. Her response doesn’t even make much sense in the context, as a response to Myc’s “lovely when you bring your friends ‘round,” unless the text is purposefully implying that Mary is as far from a friend to Sherlock as it gets. Which is important as it comes right before the scene between John and Mary, setting us up to see Mary’s return to John’s world as a very ominous thing.

During the conversation with Sherlock’s dad, Mary looks very uncomfortable about the idea of “giving it up for children.” Which is important considering that both she and John are trying desperately hard to convince themselves they want a quiet, domestic life. It echoes her initial horrified expression at finding out she’s pregnant. She both desperately wants and can’t bear to give up her former lifestyle. And as a psychopath, she has a lot of trouble sticking to one career (or partner) for long before the disillusionment and disappointment sets in. Mary is fighting hard to keep interested in this relationship—and John’s unattainableness these past few months probably helped—but she just can’t make this sort of lifestyle work forever. Her smile does start to return a bit when Sherlock’s dad (John’s foil) says that he “couldn’t bear to argue with her” and calls himself a moron. That’s the part of her relationship with John that does appeal to her, but that isn’t enough to interest her permanently—it’s easy for Mary to get people to like her, not to argue with her, to see her as dominant. She wants both power and the excitement of uncertainty, and she can’t have both at the same time. Again, it’s a catch-22. She can’t stand “being the sane one,” but the alternative doesn’t entirely appeal either. And despite her attraction to John’s darker side (“it’s a tiny bit sexy”), she built her relationship with him on normalcy, which comforts and bores both of them. This contrasts Sherl’s relationship with John, which brings out John’s dark side rather than trying to ignore it. 

Mary isn’t nervous around John at all, just frustrated. When he walks in, she pointedly flips all the book’s pages at once instead of fidgeting with them (which she’d do if she was actually pretending to read out of fear of making eye contact.) Her jaw looks quite tense, too. In this scene, we’re going to see her “dosing” John, giving him just enough validation and affection to keep him while slipping in as many degrading comments and looks as she can.  Which is already a very bad sign for the relationship—Mary is still devaluing him. 

In the flashback to Baker Street, Mary gives Mrs. Hudson a very disparaging look (again, her charm is now being reserved for very special circumstances).

Sherlock is willing to call Mary a psychopath, a term he uses famously sparingly. And Mary accepts it, unsurprised. I get the feeling that this isn’t the first time she’s been called a psychopath, which makes sense—since psychopaths have such fleeting, intense and complicated relationships, I’d guess that she’s probably had people important to her call her a psychopath before. She doesn’t look vulnerable. She does, however, look affronted at John shouting—he is forcing a conversation and asserting his dominance simultaneously. 

This is Mary’s reaction to Sherlock’s acknowledgment of her dangerousness. She is smiling a bit, pleased that she at least has that potential power left. I don’t see any shame here—Sherlock looks much more guilty here than she does. She does show regret once in this scene, though, and it’s hugely telling: 

This is after John says she “wasn’t supposed to be like that.” This is something Mary deeply empathizes with—having a quest for normalcy thwarted by a deep desire for danger.

The moment is short-lived though, and then we get the mind palace!Mary head tilt as John mentions that she is carrying his child. This is a piece of influence she still has. And from there, things take a turn for the darker. 

Mary doesn’t look confused or surprised, even when she asks John why she should sit in the chair. Something has shifted, she’s understood something, and from here on she has control in the scene. She is powerfully silent. She walks over to the chair calmly and steadily, sits with her feet planted firmly, and aggressively adjusts her clothing. She is already in her battle armor. And only after this point in the scene, after she understands the dynamic well enough to know how to play it, do we see any apparent vulnerability, which makes me very distrustful of her emotions here. She doesn’t start out looking meek—she becomes that after observing John and calculating her behavior. And the coldness keeps flashing through, so at the very least, she certainly isn’t consistently emotionally engaged in one of the most important discussions of their marriage. In fact, the cold, tiny smile that you can see starting to form in the top picture reminds me of the exchange with Magnussen: “The fact that you know it’s going to happen isn’t going to stop it.” “Then, why am I smiling?”

We flash back to the present and see Mary teasing John for taking too long to decide—“Oh, are we doing conversation today? It really is Christmas.” She doesn’t seem excited about him talking to her again. Not pleased to have the conversation back, only angry that he went away.

Mary’s meekness drops on “if you love me, don’t read it in front of me.” This is very manipulative, and her cold demeanor shows that that isn’t accidental. She’s appealing to both the romantic and the emotionally constipated sides of John Watson—he doesn’t want to have to deal with this, and she uses that. She does appear to be very upset on “you won’t love me when you’re finished.” I feel for Mary here, I really do—she can’t stand the idea of being alone one more time, with this the latest in a string of horribly fated relationships. But here’s the problem—feeling lonely doesn’t change her actions. Jeffrey Dahmer said he ate parts of his victims to be closer to them, to become one with them. I know Mary is no Jeffrey Dahmer, and that’s not what I’m suggesting. But emotional pain doesn’t preclude hurting others. And feeling intense pain at getting caught isn’t the same thing as remorse for the actions. Psychopathy is one of the personality disorders whose sufferers have the least potential to change. Mary’s innate state is psychopathy. That’s not something to blame her for, but it’s something that has to be acknowledged. And that point is driven home when, less than a minute later, she is back to the hardness and manipulation that she shows us so much of.

She teases Sherlock (joking about Janine) as he winces in pain, and talks about the morals of murder like mathematics. That’s especially interesting because a lot of researchers ask psychopaths these kinds of questions about when killing becomes ok, and psychopaths approach these problems mathematically, in terms of numbers instead of lives. And then she blames John for choosing her. That, to me, is the moment where we see that Mary cannot possibly stay in a relationship with John. He is the rule of her relationships, not the exception to it. She doesn’t show any remorse about blaming him for something he couldn’t possibly have known. Which emphasizes another huge problem with John and Mary’s relationship—anyone who puts up with the coldness and cruelty that a psychopath shows when devaluing somebody will lose the psychopath’s respect. The more forgiving John is, the less he’ll appeal to Mary. The more he pulls away, the more she’ll fight to retain her dominance, but when he comes back she will eventually be disappointed. In a psychopath’s eyes, anyone who comes back to them becomes a doormat and therefore more worthy of poor treatment—despite the fact that the psychopath doesn’t want them to leave. It’s a hugely vicious cycle. 

Quick question: where does the phone that Mary “calls the ambulance with” come from? Because I don’t remember there being a phone on the office floor next to Magnussen when Sherlock walks in on them. I could have missed something, but that’d be a pretty good indication that she didn’t “save his life.”

The showrunners flat-out tell us that Mary is unpredictable, and that they are giving us “mixed messages” about her. Sherlock himself sends John mixed messages, telling him to trust Mary right after calling her a dangerous psychopath. They’re really rubbing in our faces that on the surface, they are only showing us pieces of who Mary is.  

Back at Christmas, Mary makes a big show of refusing to get up and come closer to John (she’s not at risk for being hurt, and she knows it. John doesn’t seem to me like he’d physically abuse a girlfriend, and certainly not his pregnant wife), trying to hold power for as long as she can. She also draws a lot of attention to her pregnancy, grimacing as she stands and whimpering, “no, I’m fine.” It’s more dramatic than is warranted—while pregnancy is very hard, she’s making a much bigger deal out of standing up than she needs to, especially since she doesn’t have trouble walking. John, a doctor, looks frustrated—he recognizes how over-the-top her performance of meek helplessness is. They aren’t even back together yet and they’re already snapping at each other. 

(Just want to quickly point out how awkward the sonograms must have been since they weren’t talking until the day Sherlock shot CAM.)

This reads to me as real emotion. But it’s a very complicated and bittersweet scene for Mary. She isn’t alone, she’s been taken back, she’s succeeded. But that success also traps her in a life that she absolutely hates. And that hatred proves to her that this can’t be any different—once again, Mary’s success is also the one thing that traps her in a miserable situation, where she’ll be slowly growing less and less attracted to John. She “gives up” her name without a moment’s hesitation, but we already know that her past isn’t a part of her self that she can or wants to let go of. And again, we see only part of her face. We get her tear filled eyes, but not her mouth, and considering how much dissonance there is in most of her expressions, that’s a lot of information we aren’t being given. And so they restart their relationship with John furious and Mary regaining dominance, telling him exactly what to do and refusing to let him choose their child’s name. This dynamic was already working horribly for them at the beginning, before Mary shot Sherlock and turned out to be an assassin.

 Considering how emotional Sherlock has been this season, Mycroft’s deductions are our most reliable source of information. And he thinks of Magnussen, who’s after Mary and driving a wedge between John and her, is a “necessary evil.” Which doesn’t bode well for Mary’s future existence on the show.

Mary means something very different from what John understands with her comment about Sherlock bringing them out to see his mum and dad for a reason. She looks worried enough that I think she’s realized there was something in her tea, and Sherlock put it there. Despite what they say, neither of them trusts each other at all. After all, it would make sense to take Mary—pregnant assassin, appealing sweetness and violence all rolled up into one package that CAM would probably find fascinating (and possibly distracting enough to give Sherlock the time to formulate a plan that wouldn’t involve becoming a murderer.) She might have figured out the mind palace in time, too. But Sherlock does not take her, and presumably doesn’t even tell her about the plan to rescue her own files, even though she already proved herself able to outsmart Magnussen. I don’t think he expected it to be physically dangerous—he calls Magnussen a dangerous man, but he seemed absolutely shocked at having to use the gun that he brought as an extra precaution.  As in their first encounter, Magnussen is very civilized. There are no Moriarty-style bombs, and I don’t think Sherlock was expecting any. The security doesn’t lift a finger and apparently never even searches them. He doesn’t trust her to stay reliable even on a mission to get the information she wants.

Cinematically, it also looks quite ominous to see her so worried behind John’s smiling back (who grins widest when Sherlock is mentioned.)

Magnussen speaks about Mary as if she is morally inferior to him, calling her a murderer and himself merely a businessman. This is coming from “the most dangerous man we’ve ever encountered,” and the man Sherlock hates the most. 

CAM sees John’s love for danger and morbidity, saying that John “might enjoy” reading Mary’s files. But Mary is more than even John, danger addict that he is, can face, despite his uniquely strong curiosity for this sort of thing. And John realizes that, chooses not to read the files (which is another facet of why the “people who hate Mary” are terrifying to John—they would mean having to literally confront her past face-to-face).  Also interesting: Mary’s files are stored in a dark corner of Magnussen’s mind palace, hidden behind some very creepy toy acrobats and clowns. Performers in a vivid and dark circus.

We get another parallel between Magnussen and Mary and John’s relationship in the comment “knowing is owning.” The more information Mary has that John doesn’t, the more firmly she owns him. AGRA symbolizes knowledge, and whoever has it owns the relationship. Which is pretty alarming. Healthy relationships aren’t about ownership. And Mary and Magnussen both see John as an asset as well as a person. He is a parcel of domesticity, protection from the suspicion of those after her (by solidifying her new identity), and influence over the Holmes boys, who are some of the most influential men in the country.

The face flicking also parallels the relationship—it’s the same sort of steady drip of increasing abuse as “dosing.” And it takes a shot to stop Magnussen’s abuse. Which to me seems like a possible foreshadowing of Mary’s future. 

Oh man, this is so important. While Mary says she’s going to “keep him in trouble,” her face is hidden again. There’s literally more to her statement than meets the eye. Then, as Mary turns around, both her and Sherlock’s smiles completely vanish.  They are both doing “love ya, Janine!”-type fake smiles, but because the camera isn’t giving us a close-up of their faces, it’s hard to notice at first. There is no love lost between the two of them, but they are both pretending to like each other up until the very last minute. Then Mary returns to John, standing possessively as she grabs his hand, claiming in front of Sherlock the physical contact with John that Sherlock so painfully lacks. This is the last moment to prove to Sherlock that she won while she still has a competitor. She walks away quickly, without a single comforting gesture to John for this final goodbye, cold as Mycroft and the security guards.

After Sherlock’s plane departs, Mary and John are left together, red and black on the tarmac. The two most ominous colors (and the colors of checker pieces. Aren’t they all playing one giant game, a game that’s never over?)

John drops Mary’s hand when Sherlock’s plane is turned around, and Mary’s cold readiness comes back. The game is back on, just when she thought all the excitement was over.

So where does that ultimately leave Mary and John? Well, it shows us that no matter how intensely either of them wants their relationship to work out, it never will. They’re never on the same wavelength—the closer John comes, the farther Mary will eventually want to pull back, and the more distant John is the harder Mary will fight to keep him. (For any of my fellow math nerds, they’re like sine and cosine, following the same relationship trajectory without their high points meeting.) A relationship with Mary will always be a short-lived thing, because her own desires are contradictory and harmful to her partners. But the real reason that these two won’t work out lies in the essence of who Mary is: a psychopath. And the problem with that isn’t that she’s incapable of remorse, but that she won’t feel it. Ultimately, she is someone who will always believe that the ends justify the means, and who loves using dangerous and harmful means to achieve those ends. And that is such a damaging sort of relationship that the writers won’t keep John Watson in it for long. Mary is set up to show us that no matter how twisted John and Sherlock’s relationship is, John on his own will go for people who are much more harmful to him. And that makes a relationship with Sherlock, emotionally immature and manipulative as he sometimes is, the closest thing to a healthy relationship that could ever make John happy.


End file.
